Thursday, April 14, 2011

WrestleMania Weekend - Sunday Part Two

Once we got off MARTA at the GA Dome, the crowds were already gathering even though it was about a 1/2 before the doors were suppose to open.

We moved to an entrance that wasn't near the MARTA stop, and waited. Since there was 71,000 people who where going to want to enter, they were going to have all the entrances open.

Once 4:30 hit, the doors were open. We were within the GA Dome in 5 minutes, which is very different than all the other live wrestling shows we've been to. Usually it can take a 1/2 hour or more to get inside the venue. But I suppose the folks at the GA Dome are used to dealing with massive crowds.

Todd at WrestleMania!

Once inside, we found our seats, then Todd went to get drinks and popcorn. It was a bit of a wait until things got started, but we had some nice folks sitting next to us that we talked to, and it was interesting to watch all the people fill into the Dome.

Lumberjacks!

Before it went live on TV, there was a match just for us folks there live (it will be on the DVD). It was a lumberjack match (which is where a bunch of people surround the ring to make sure the wrestlers inside stay in the ring), but before long the Raw GM, Teddy Long, came out and declared the match a Royal Rumble style match with all the lumberjacks. It was pretty neat.

The Rock!

Then it was time to go live. Now if you have ever watched a wrestling PPV on tv, there is always a screen that has the legal stuff on it before the PPV starts. They show that screen on the teletrones, and the crowd goes wild, since we know that we are going live. The crowd went even more wild because it was WrestleMania.

The first thing that happened was The Rock came out because he was the special guest host for WrestleMania this year. He has been appearing on Raw occasionally the past few months in anticipation of WrestleMania and you can tell that he was having a great time being The Rock again. Todd thinks he forgot how much fun it is to be an over the top wrestling character.

Several of the matches were meh (the Michael Cole and Jerry "The King" Lawler one was particularly painful as it went on too long), and one was bittersweet without us even knowing it at the time.

Edge is one of my favorite wrestlers, and has been pretty much since I started watching. He wrestled Alberto Del Rio at WrestleMania for the World Heavyweight Championship. And he won, and he & Christian attacked De Rio's car to the crowd cheering.

What we didn't know at the time was that this match was going to be Edge's last ever. He got some MRI results back and announced on Raw this past Monday that due to a previous neck injury getting worse, he was going to have to retired from wrestling, lest he break his neck and become paralyzed.

So, I'm super thankful that I was able to see his last match live.

The best match of the night was Undertaker vs. Triple H. Now Undertaker has never been beat at WrestleMania and going into this match his record was 18-0. The match was amazing, partly because the Undertaker hit a move wrong in the beginning of it, and got hurt. Despite being obviously injured for real, he finished the match and beat Triple H to become 19-0. But he had to be taken out of the arena via stretcher.

The last match was John Cena vs. The Miz for the WWE Championship. Now The Rock had been mocking Cena for weeks, so we all knew that he was going to get involved. And he did, and the match was a little anti-climatic, especially after Taker and Triple H.

But it set up the main event for next year's WrestleMania - it was announced on Raw the following night that the main event for 2012's WrestleMania is going to be John Cena vs. The Rock. I don't think a main event has ever been announced a year in advance, and Todd is tempted to go since it's not that far in Miami - I don't think we'll have the money though.

We got out of the GA Dome, and got a bit lost trying to find the parking lot with the car in it. And once we found the car, we had to deal with all the traffic. We didn't make it back to my aunt and uncle's house until 1 am.

But it was an awesome day! We are thinking about possibly trying to go to WrestleMania 30, which is going to be at Madison Square Gardens in NYC.